Tuesday, August 7, 2012

What August 7th Means To Me: Nine Friggin' Years

When I first moved to Los Angeles, a common question I received was "for how long?" as if my decision was some momentary lapse of reason that I'd soon consider to be a mistake. And I guess I bought into their logic after I was asked for the 60th time. So my answer became some version of "I'm gonna try it out for a year, ya know, see what happens, and ya know, I'll just see...ya know...ya know" <shrug shrug elbow elbow> "ya know..."

Well, nine years later, I'm still here, and I haven't heard that question since 2007. I guess since I've now spent more than a quarter of my life in Los Angeles (it still feels weird to put it in that context), it's officially home. I can't really remember any real goals I had, aside from nebulous ideas of "success", or where I thought I'd be by this point when I first started driving to California nine years ago, but I'm fairly certain it was different from this. No real complaints or anything, but I supposed the best laid plans rarely come to fruition. I was just a kid then, really, now I suppose I'm an adult (most of the time, anyway).

LA is kind of a weird place; the inertia of it makes it hard to leave. It's a unique environment that roots itself in dreams and possibilities (and all that shit), and even if such things are mostly a mirage, sometimes it's fun to live in the fantasy. After all, false hope is still hope, and if living "in the present," is a suggested goal of life, then whatever satisfies that need will suffice. And LA definitely does that. Not to mention the weather is great. Oh yeah and Disneyland is close by...and a few casinos.

I often consider what it would be like to leave LA, and I'm hardly against the notion, but I have no real intentions on it, and I would miss the lifestyle more than I probably can imagine. But chapters often open and close without much warning, so I'll see where the next nine years take me.